Tuesday, July 01, 2008

McCain's POW experience left him an intellectual cripple

ABC News' Teddy Davis and Molly Hunter Report: While Barack Obama was urging supporters not to devalue the military service of rival John McCain, an informal Obama adviser argued Monday that the former POW's isolation during the Vietnam War has hobbled the Arizona senator's capacity as a war-time leader.

“Sadly, Sen. McCain was not available during those times, and I say that with all due respect to him," said informal Obama adviser Rand Beers. "I think that the notion that the members of the Senate who were in the ground forces or who were ashore in Vietnam have a very different view of Vietnam and the cost that you described than John McCain does because he was in isolation essentially for many of those years and did not experience the turmoil here or the challenges that were involved for those of us who served in Vietnam during the Vietnam war."

"So I think," he continued, "to some extent his national security experience in that regard is sadly limited and I think it is reflected in some of the ways that he thinks about how U.S. forces might be committed to conflicts around the world."

Yes, this Democrat thinks that McCain, somehow magically rendered illiterate by his time in prison, is an intellectual cripple, by virtue of the fact that he missed out on the key developmental experience of smoking pot, dropping acid with Timothy Leary and and banging hippie chicks during the Summer of Love. Obama, of course, has the advantage of living through this time of enlightenment. He would have been about seven or ten years old at the time.